


Aftermath

by rowaning



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Explosions, F/F, Fire, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, Hurt/Comfort, More hurt less comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowaning/pseuds/rowaning
Summary: A great and terrible force is unleashed, leaving destruction and the vessel that summoned it in it's wake.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Context: This story features two of my OCs who I have not formally written anything about before. Mandy is a half-human-half-faerie with extremely powerful fire magic which is connected to a separate entity known as a phoenix (yes i know its an xmen ripoff), Venesse is an ice faerie who is in a romantic relationship with Mandy. 
> 
> I felt like writing a scene where someone unleashes a terrible power to turn the tide of an unwinnable battle with a focus on how that feels and a bit about the recovery afterwards. There is no context for the battle cause I didn't feel like making it.

**Mandy**

Mandy reached inward, seeking desperately for... something. Down. Down past the blood that was a gift from her father and a curse from her mother. Down into her bones, the very structure of her being, and deeper. Into cells, into proteins, into molecules. Into the spaces between, where the fire lived. And she pulled, pulled with every ounce of strength left in her body, in her soul. She pulled with all of the determination in her bones, with all of the anger in her heart. She found hopelessness and desperation in her chest and turned it inwards, and pulled with that too. And the phoenix answered her call and the flames rose from deep within her. And they consumed everything.

It felt like burning alive. It felt like dancing. It felt like being consumed, and it felt like consuming. It felt like a storm, powerful and howling and unstoppable. It felt like a current pulling her under. It felt like raw power that ripped through her body and expanded outwards, destroying everything in its path.

It felt like dying.

The flames erupted from her and rose, towering over the battlefield and forming the shape of a massive falcon before crashing to the ground and spreading across the field. It was over in seconds. Or maybe centuries. The flames left her and they took something with them. She felt it as they made their exit, following the path she had drawn for them. She felt the drain, the pull against her very soul, mirroring how she had pulled them before. She reached for it desperately, not understanding what it was but knowing that she did not want to let it go. In the end, she didn’t have a choice. The flames died down, revealing the desolate wasteland extending miles from her epicentre. The phoenix was gone, and she was left shattered and empty. The fires that had lived within her, inside her, deep in the cracks of her very being in the space between spaces were gone. Not taken. Freely given, freely summoned, freely cast out into a battle she had no hopes of winning. Gone. She hadn’t realized before, the warmth that rose up through her bones, through her blood, through her heart and lungs and eyes, through her soul. She hadn’t realized what lived within her, had never known the true size of the phoenix’s wings. And now it was gone.

She was cold. It had been years. It had been minutes. It had been eternities. The cold came slowly. It started in her fingers, in her toes, and spread up her limbs. A strange, disembodied part of her mind screamed, begging her to move, to act, to do something before it spread further. The rest of her mind was cold and quiet, and she knew that nothing would halt it. _There’s no taking it back_ , the cold part of her mind said. _This is what we are now_.

She barely noticed when she fell to her knees. She didn’t notice the burns or the mangled flesh barely hanging onto her body. She didn’t notice bones broken from forces a skeleton was never meant to withstand. She didn’t notice vocal cords shredded from a single, piercing scream shared by the phoenix and its vessel. She did notice the ground, closer now, stripped bare of any life, charred and smoking. How curious, that the world around her was burning yet she was so cold. An empty darkness that felt like nothing crept into the edges of her vision, and the ground came even closer. Arms wrapped around her, arms that were colder than her own body but familiar, and comforting. The ground stopped rushing towards her, but the darkness didn’t. It closed in on all sides and surrounded her, until she felt like nothing too.

* * *

**Venesse**

There was going to be a battle. Venesse had watched the love of her life face down an army, hopelessly outnumbered, ready to give her life to stop the onslaught. She had been running, sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her. Reaching with one outstretched arm, hoping to reach the apex in time. To reach _her_ in time. To touch her, to hold her in her arms just one more time. She had screamed Mandy’s name, praying to gods she didn’t believe in that she would hear, that she would turn, that she would smile with half her lips the way she always does. That she would say Venesse’s name the way she always does. She would’ve been happy to die then, with her love at her side and her name on her lips facing down an enemy they wouldn’t survive defeating. But Mandy didn’t hear, and she didn’t turn. Instead, she faced the enemy, closed her eyes, and screamed. And the world ended.

It sounded like a human scream, at first. A battle cry filled with desperation and determination. Something else was below it, an avian shriek that grew in pitch and volume until it drowned out everything on the battlefield. It happened in seconds. Venesse watched as glowing lines formed along her lover’s skin, as flames erupted from her mouth and eyes, so much fire with so much force that it pushed through her very skin. For barely a moment, Mandy was a creature made of flames, beautiful and terrible. Then the heat and light and ever consuming hunger spread further, concealing whatever was left of her body. It pushed upwards, illuminating the sky brighter than any sun. It spread its great wings and they extended for miles, larger than the armies their enemy had brought. Its scream was joined by the roar of flames as it reached its apex, and then it came crashing down to the ground. And then it was over, and they were left standing in a smoking crater.

Venesse’s ears were ringing and her eyes were watering. Her exposed skin ached where it wasn’t numb and her clothes were charred. The phoenix had been selective in its destruction but she had not been spared the heat. That heat stung under her skin now, melting the ice that formed the structure of her being. It was painful, but not nearly as painful as the vision in front of her. Mandy stood at the centre of the crater. Corpses stripped bare of flesh, really just piles of scorched bone, were strewn out from her. It might have looked beautiful from above, a perfect circle of destruction. Down here, it looked horrific. But the destruction wasn’t what she was looking at. She had eyes only for her love.

Her armour had been shredded, most of it was on the ground around her twisted and disfigured by heat that even the enhanced alloy couldn’t handle. She was horribly burnt, the hair was gone from her head and her charred flesh revealed bone in some places. Her mouth was open, and she could have still been screaming below the dull tone that rang in Venesse’s ears. Venesse was frozen in place, frozen in fear and horror at what she saw. Was Mandy alive? Or just another corpse that hadn’t yet realized it was dead? Maybe a mirage conjured by her own mind, and the real Mandy had been consumed by the flames? It wasn’t until her love fell to her knees that Venesse found she could move her own feet. She took a shaky step towards the centre, then another, then faster until she was sprinting on legs that could barely hold her up. Mandy pitched forwards just as she reached her, and Venesse dove towards her and wrapped her arms around her, ignoring the wounds and the heat bubbling within the burns on both their bodies. She held her love close, feeling for her shuddering heartbeat to remind herself that she was still alive. Mandy’s breathing was shallow and laboured and blood came up through her mouth with every breath. Venesse cried with smoke stung eyes as the fires began to die around them. They had survived. They had won, if this could be called winning.

* * *

Wounds will heal, with time and with magic. Other things will not. The scar tissue that will make its home crisscrossing their skin, and the numbness that will live beneath it. The damaged veins that will never fade from Venesse’s eyes. The rasp and lowered pitch of Mandy’s voice, long after she learns to speak again. Deeper things too. The delay when Venesse tries to summon her ice, and how it always forms already melting. The shivers that wrack Mandy’s body no matter the temperature of the room she's in. The hollowness in her eyes when she goes searching for fire that isn’t there anymore. The screams in the night as she is tormented by the memory of what she unleashed.

When the night terrors come, Venesse will roll over and hold Mandy close to herself. It will feel different, wrong almost, when Mandy is so cold without her flames and Venesse is so warm despite her ice. She will hold her love in her arms anyway, and together they will look for the pieces of Mandy’s shattered soul and do their best to put each other back together.

**Author's Note:**

> I almost forgot that I'd written this back in September (2020), but I remembered and gave it a few touch ups. Original works don't get much traffic but hey I made this account to put my writing somewhere so I'm gonna do exactly that.


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